As a kid, one of my most favorite television shows was Lifetime’s ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’ Ignoring host Robert Stack’s cheesy detective overcoat and affected narration, the program offered more than just something to feel eerie about every week: It posed a metaphysical impossibility, wrapped in the form of a haunted Toys ‘R’ Us or a spontaneously combusting woman. No matter how outrageously unbelievable the case’s dramatic re-enactment was, I couldn’t help but be entertained by the sheer kitschy-ness of the supposed supernatural forces at play. And thus began my skeptical obsession with the unknown.
Fast forward past some failed attempts at cursing my fifth grade P.E. teacher and a couple fire-hazard seances with my Parker Brothers’ Ouija board to last Friday, when I decided to indulge in my longtime fascination by seeing a tarot-card reader. More than ready to waste a good piece of my hard-earned paycheck, I drove to Garnet Street in Pacific Beach in search of a neon-lit gypsy den. When I finally arrived at the Psychic Reader’s tiny storefront, a note in capital letters by someone named Sofie directed me to a satellite location on Grand Street.
After stopping to get some cash, I began to mentally prep myself. My plan was to give her no direction by using as little emotion as possible. It would be journalist versus psychic, and both our fates were in the cards. I parked at the Grand Street location and walked up to a pale white house. My knocks on the door were answered by a yappy Pomeranian’s barks until Sofie finally came to the door. Her face was aged and without makeup, framed by short, slick brown hair. Full lips hid slightly crooked teeth. She wore a black cotton V-neck and blue pajama pants covered with a monkey-puppet team by the name of Nick and Nora. Even though her wardrobe crushed my psychic stereotype, something else was bothering me even more: the swollen black and blue skin surrounding her right eye.
She invited me into her home. Rather than being enveloped by a wave of incense and sitar music, I was greeted by Jessica Alba’s mediocre dance film ‘Honey’ on a big-screen in the living room. On our way to the reading nook, we walked over the peculiar ch
ocolate-brown carpet and past white walls covered with impartial religious artwork. In one room hung a painting of Jesus and Mary across from a jolly, dancing four-foot Buddha statue whose feet were garnished with equally cheery ceramic frogs (although I don’t think the frogs were representing any particular religious group ‘mdash; they were most likely there just to join the fun).’
We sat down and she excused her black eye (apparently she fell in a backyard maintenance accident). I resisted the urge to ask why, if she was a real psychic, she hadn’t been able to predict the accident, instead following her instructions to shuffle the cards three times, place my right hand on the deck and think of two life wishes. I closed my eyes and imagined the two most important things I could think of at the moment: 1) the most delicious pastrami sandwich known to mankind, and 2) the ability to fly. Then, the tarot-card reading began.
Although she didn’t pick up on the deli meat’s importance in my life, she did provide information that could be categorized into three areas: 1) shots in the dark, 2) useless supernatural details and 3) personal cheerleading.
Every time she guessed something that fell into the first category, she connected it back to one of my positive personal qualities. When she incorrectly (as far as I know) predicted I would become a nurse, she connected her inkling to my ‘caregiver’ qualities. After I let my age slip, she said I would travel to Europe this summer to ‘find myself.’ When she described my childhood as ‘happy,’ I smirked, and she immediately conceded there was, nevertheless, a lack of communication between my father and me. As the stereotypical life details of a 20-something UCSD student racked up in the absence of any novel mystique (would it have killed her to wear a headscarf?), the skeptic in me grew impatient.
That’s why, as soon as she started throwing around arbitrary mystical details about my life, I ate them right up. Apparently, my soul has had six lives and will total nine in whole. I also have an inherent psychic intuition and would greatly benefit from a technique called ‘affirmation,’ a daily practice where I would write down my life goals. I asked her what the difference was between someone with psychic intuition and a person without it. She used repeat offenders to explain.
‘Why do you think they keep going back to jail?’ Sofie asked. ‘They keep making the same mistakes. No intuition.’
But my reading’s most enjoyable feedback came from category three. Aside from praising my creative and selfless qualities, Sofie said my life was ‘only going to get easier from here,’ and that I would be a famous writer. Whether this was true wasn’t important; I was going to pay $55 for this reading and if I wanted to get my money’s worth, I would have to believe it. That’s when I realized the genius of a psychic’s career: Curiosity of the unknown draws people in, but paying for a reading makes them latch onto whatever positive insight their reader has to offer. But considering her lack of magical allure, Sofie should scrap the vague predictions and re-title her career ‘personal ass-kisser.’
After all my cards were laid out and she’d exhausted her use of the word ‘intuition,’ I paid her and left her eerie home with a newfound calmness. Even if I’d just wasted a third of my paycheck on empty promises of a fabulous life from a beaten-up stranger, sometimes believing in a better future is the first step to having one.